Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatric Care
Religion and spirituality are important dimensions of human experience, dimensions that many patients would like to discuss with physicians in their medical and psychiatric care. Data support the benefits of such discussions, but few physicians routinely engage patients. Lack of time, experience, and training are cited as the main barriers. This chapter summarizes the rationale for including exploration of religious and spiritual issues in psychiatric care. Including the spiritual dimension of patients’ lives and understanding their religious beliefs and practices increases our potential to be of greater service to our patients, to grow ourselves, to provide better care, and to achieve better outcomes. In this chapter we address the barriers and describe an experiential training seminar for psychiatry residents as one of the solutions.